Embodied experience of the film spectator: emotional response to the documentary Las Mujeres de las FARC

ABSTRACT

This article examines how the documentary Las Mujeres de las FARC raises awareness and strengthens a culture of peace and reconciliation among university students in the Colombian Caribbean. The results show, on the one hand, the documentary’s potential to generate a significant degree of narrative sympathy insofar as it includes, firstly, the voices of guerrilla women traditionally excluded from the discourses of conflict, and secondly, by generating emotional and sympathetic reactions among participants who have experienced the armed conflict up close. On the other hand, a group of participants clearly distanced themselves from the documentary by considering that it is a romanticised discourse of the lives of guerrilla women and avoids to address the human rights violations inflicted upon members of the group and the civilian population at large. This project was framed within a mixed method research design and addressed two dimensions: the emotional response of spectators from a sympathy and narrative understanding perspective, and the projection and identification of the spectators mediated via empathy with the characters portrayed. Finally, the pedagogical potential of the documentary in the promotion of a culture of peace and reconciliation in Colombia is discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Documentary
• embodied experience
• emotions
• sympathy
• narrative understanding
• empathy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In the middle of the second half of 2012, the government of Colombia led by then President Juan Manuel Santos (in office between 2010 and 2018) publicly referred to the official start of talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The intention was to open a negotiation and peace process that would lead to the resolution of the armed conflict. Subsequently, after four years of negotiations and dialogue in Havana, Cuba, the ‘Final Agreement for the End of the Conflict and the Construction of a Stable and Lasting Peace in Colombia’ was reached at the end of 2016.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Minciencias-Colciencias), in the framework of the call for young researchers and innovators No. 812-2018.